Once the Spink boat crossed the bows of the Fly-up-the-Creek, and the excited Lettie cried:
“Oh, dear! that boy is beating us. Can’t you go faster, Dan? I thought you always were speedy?”
“No. Only Speedwell,” returned Dan, gravely.
“I think we’re going quite fast enough,” remarked Mildred, who was clinging tightly to the hempen loop that Dan had put into her hand when they started.
“It does not follow that we’re being left behind because the Albatross crossed in front of us,” Dan reassured Lettie.
The girl raised up her head to look, and Billy yelled at her:
“Low bridge! Down, I say! Do you want your head knocked off?”
For at that moment Dan had brought the helm about. The boom swept across the body of the iceboat. Billy himself dropped to a horizontal posture.
With creaking and groaning the huge sail bellied out at just the right angle and the slant of the wind flung the iceboat forward on the new tack. She fairly leaped from the ice under the momentum of that sudden gust, and both girls screamed.
Billy laughed happily, for nobody was hurt, and the Fly-up-the-Creek was almost at once on even keel again. But the two girls could only cling tight for the next few minutes and gasp their fear into each other’s ears.